Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has effectively committed the Conservatives to a policy of conflict, and possibly even rupture, with the European Union. Following her recent pronouncements, Badenoch has made withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and ditching net zero commitments a loyalty test for Conservative candidates, reviving memories of Boris Johnson's purge of pro-Europeans.
ECHR withdrawal threatens post-Brexit agreements
The UK's continued membership of the ECHR underpins every element of its post-Brexit relationship with the EU. Article 763 of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (2021) commits both sides to adhere to shared values, including human rights treaties, while Article 771 makes this commitment an essential condition of the deal. Article 772 states that a breach of this undertaking gives the other party the right to suspend or terminate the agreement.
The EU insisted on these references above all to protect peace in Northern Ireland, notes Catherine Barnard, professor of EU law and a fellow of the UK in a Changing Europe thinktank. The ECHR is embedded in the Good Friday agreement, in which Britain committed to enshrining convention rights in Northern Irish law. The Windsor framework, the deal hammered out by Rishi Sunak to ease post-Brexit trade across the Irish sea while keeping the land border open, specifically commits Britain to "no diminution of rights, safeguards or equality of opportunity" as set out in the Good Friday agreement.
Multiple cooperation areas at risk
ECHR membership also underpins many other areas of cooperation, including data sharing and criminal extradition arrangements. Even the Gibraltar agreement, signed on 15 July, requires both sides to remain signatories. A British government that left the convention would not be making a narrow adjustment to its human rights regime; it would be pulling on a thread that runs through the entire fabric of the post-Brexit relationship.
Conservatives claim that the danger is overblown, that the EU would never let a dispute over the ECHR detonate an important trading relationship. But that smacks of the complacency apparent throughout the Brexit process. David Wolfson, the shadow attorney general, argued last year that quitting the ECHR would not breach the Good Friday agreement because it only required convention rights to be accessible in domestic courts. Other legal experts, not least in Northern Ireland, disagree, noting that the reason the ECHR is in the Good Friday agreement is to ensure those rights are protected by a body independent of the British state.
Climate commitments also under threat
The Trade and Cooperation Agreement's Article 772 also states that "an act or omission that materially defeats the object and purpose of the Paris agreement shall always be considered a serious and substantial failure" to fulfil the "essential obligations" of the agreement. Depending on where Badenoch's anti-net zero policy lands, that could spell serious trouble for the trading relationship. Its provisions to level the playing field hinge on shared climate goals.
European responsibility to solidify relationship
Europeans may roll their eyes and take Badenoch's grandstanding as further evidence that British politics remains, to use her word, "unserious". But this, too, would be complacent. As the global order fragments and Europeans find themselves squeezed by an aggressive Russia, coercive US and mercantilist China, the UK-EU relationship has become vital to European security. It is not enough for Brussels to repeat that it is for Britain to decide what relationship it wants. Both sides have a responsibility to solidify it ahead of the next UK election.
Indeed, Andy Burnham may need all the help he can get. His goodwill has yet to materialise into clear European policy, and Starmer's reset reached the limit of what can be achieved within Labour's red lines of no return to the single market, the customs union, or free movement. To keep the relationship moving forward, a new project that deepens institutional and political links and does not cross either side's current red lines is needed. A defence pact – building on existing coalitions of the willing and including Ukraine – is the obvious candidate. To slay Badenoch's no-deal ghost, Brussels must play its part in proving the relationship's value.
